What's worse with a central id system - you just get differently-flavored fraud. Instead of a counterfeiter working in his basement on fake ids and Social Security #'s, you get computer hackers in third world countries hacking into the central system to simply change the id details.
So, my retina pattern gets referenced to a terrorists, and vice versa - some undesirable can use his pattern to pretend to be me.
And how the hell can I fix my info once my eye pattern is hacked?! Same reason why SSN fraud is really rough - you can't get a new number once compromised and there is no way to block your # from having credit cards and such opened under it.
I predict about 18-20.95 a month now. I like XM; hope they keep their music selection. I would warn people from signing up for those long contracts and do month-to-month in case they merge and do something wacky like every other merger does to their customer base.
Remember, the judge refused criminal proceedings due to the insignificance and potential penalty. It doesn't rule out civil procedure, if Russian law works in a similar manner to our own system. Just like a judge would not allow an assault case to go forward if I flick you in the ear. But you could sue me later and collect damages. Civil != Criminal
That was also part of the reason why the DM has his little screen - so if you kept rolling natural 0's or something awful, they were able to keep the plot moving along.
But she did it to make a big point. Not b/c her feet were tired. And the Tea Party was the same reasoning - a bit of public theatre to draw attention to the issue and cause. Which is part of what makes this country great. If the P2P pirates went on a hunger strike or something on the front steps of the Mafiaa, then they would be making a similar statement. If I run IRC in the background and enjoy the smooth hits of the 80's in my house, then that is not quite the same distinction.
Going to the show is better for the venues and for the performers - they get a much larger cut rather than selling albums or tracks. If you love a band, don't worry about buying a disc so much. Go to their show, buy the tickets, buy the merch. That is where they profit.
Everything else the band does is their loss and exactly how their record companies make back the production budget, the performance budget, and the promotion budget.
Bands have to sell obscene amounts of albums to break even and make actual cash beyond weekend beer dues. They can achieve the same by aligning with other bands and setting up venue shows with much less effort and promotion, especially with the internet tools out there today.
And the live show is the true test of a musician - instead of the paid producer with his suite of effects and digital editing to smooth out the rough edges or bad playing.
Look, there is still no journalist shield law in place to protect Judith Miller's conversations. Reporters would really really like one. It is good for the freedom of information to allow for protection of sources for stories. And then you get to a line that has to be drawn. Who is a journalist? Could Josh be considered a journalist without MSM credentials?
Reporters want to be the 4th estate to the government, and all 3 other branches have zero interest in greater oversight. The courts don't want their proceedings televised. Congress doesn't want their business deals exposed to the light of day. The executive branch would classify the First Dog name and breed if they had the opportunity.
I don't mind the extra info or possible overload that added journalist protection brings. Until that day arrives, we see how journalists are trying to push the envelope and create a buzz that might translate into legislation. If they were smart, journalists would petition those monster media companies that own everything now and get some lobbyists up in that big round dome thingy.
I agree here with your response. An even better question is : how can a game where all the servers are controlled by microsoft even allow a client-side install like a cheat or mod?! I understand that the draw details and other things are loaded on your own xbox, but I know that in my old Team Fortress Classic courtesy of Half-life - the mods had to be allowed or loaded by the servers.
Cheating was very easy to do, but ONLY on the servers that didn't care or specifically allowed map-wide mods (like funky gravity or add-on weapons). I just don't get how microsoft can't stop it.
I agree with most of the points you make, except for being penalized by quitting mid-match. I do it often enough. When my lag is horrible. when I see modders running around with non-map weapons or speed enhancements, or you pick up a weapon only to have them kill you. Or you find someone who manages to kill everyone instantly on spawn, racking up the points. (this happened to me twice!) There are many good reasons to not penalize for this. If you all play on even terms and act fairly, then the game moves along like it should.
I've not played it yet, but the description reminds me a lot of Deja Vu - there was a second one that was released on the PC, and I enjoyed both immensely.
I cannot say that I blame the civilians who reported the items - even though it's just a Litebrite, the message on it was a little too close to the whole 9-11 thing to be completely incongruous to terrorism. We are supposed to report things that don't look right.
That being said - Boston Police are to blame. They responded out of hand, and in good Boston fashion, found a great excuse to shut down the 3 roads we have in this foolish filled-in-swamp of a city.
The Seattle police did not have this problem. People reported the items, just like in Boston, and the cops picked them up, and that was it.
Really the bigger issue here - if some kook or cop digs in your trash or breaks into your house, you usually have some idea that your privacy was breached in some manner.
If some leet hacker or fbi digs into your traffic and looks at those awful websites you've visited while they were looking for the carding suspect, then you have a 99% chance of having not a clue that they were there.
I think this at least exposes the glaringly obvious problem that we have no idea who is looking at our info that gets logged on our ISP's. They could take more steps to show you who requested the info, but I doubt that they care about customer service here when they find it easier to avoid harassment from police and just give it up whenever they knock, warrant or not.
Exactly - FISA was designed not to harass or reduce the amount of wiretapping, but rather to act as more of a recordkeeper. Our intelligence services were very skilled at not following the rule of law and instead applying thier own justification for doing things as was convenient at the time.
If you or I do this at a job, you have people who oversee you and tell you how to stay in compliance. FISA allows you to get the warrant after the fact to give time-sensitive matters precedent over procedure.
Bush wanted to stay away from FISA because he was doing things that are illegal in his scope of info gathering. If he had actual evidence of wrongdoing, or a true suspicion that could have been substantiated by FISA (which is so broad as to be ridiculous compared to what real police go through for warrants), then he could get every single warrant he wanted.
I think FISA has rarely (if ever?) denied a single warrant.
They are the recordkeeper, and their job is to record who gets tapped, why you think they need to be tapped, and how you are going to wiretap them. The neo-con line was always that laws got in the way of necessary action. Oversight gets in the way of criminal behavior - that's why Walmart has cameras watching the store. The cameras do not impede my shopping in any way, unless I also am stealing or invading Target without a good reason.
Most people talking about being a patriot do so because they are trying to attack someone/thing else; that's what Wilde was talking about. "I love America, why don't you move to Canada / learn to speak Arabic / go burn a flag you hippie / Cheney, Limbaugh, Malkin,, et al.
What you mean is more like wrapping yourself in the flag. Not very different, but nuanced enough to be different. Saying that we need to fight because honor or country demands it.
Both points of view are shortsighted and ignorant, but they are used for differing reasons; one for opposition attacks and the other for thin justifications.
But for sports fans, the tech is amazing. I am not a big sports fan, yet I remember seeing my first HD broadcast of a Sox game in a bar, and I could see the individual rocks on the field. The resolution is noticeably amazing.
However, I agree with you - unless the content is being recorded w/ HD cameras, like Discovery and the sports groups, it is a real waste. Yet, part of the point of sports broadcasts is to create the feeling that you are in a different section of the stadium or arena; HD really brings you a step closer to that experience, and is worth the added cost for programming that it brings.
That being said, I have a HD projector and 76 inch widescreen, and I still don't care enough to get the HD box for another 10 bucks a month for sports alone. If there were alternate fans getting into other HD things than sports, then they could rip the market open.
I see what you are asking - the person who controls meaning is the one with the power. This is true in any situation, legal or not. If Bush says that he defines who is a combatant and says you are a combatant, you are in jeopardy. Bush does not need any justification to do what he did - he doesn't have to cite any laws other than the ones in his head. Judges cannot and do not work that way as a rule! If the UN or Geneva Convention define who is a combatant and you don't meet that definition, you have some measure of protection due to the established definitions that have been around for fifty years.
This issue of definition is exactly what judges are supposed to be deciding - this is a big part of the job. They can be threatened and corrupted, and if you listen to the radio or pundits, it apparently must happen all the time, even while they sleep.
The definitions of language have to have a common ground that is agreed upon. Your lawyer goes through years of school to help understand exactly what those words mean. A good contract lawyer spends much of his/her time with a thesaurus to make sure a word with potential double-meaning doesn't create an adversarial situation. A good judge makes sure when he/she chooses his analogy or definition, that they are using the correct with that has a small potential to have extra, unintended meaning. It is a futile endeavor within the total scope of language to try and assign one single meaning to every single word. It is the highest calling of the legal branch of government to try and do just that.
That is FAR harder than deciding a case that already has clear and appropriate precedent set from prior case law or common law. How else would you suggest we control who gets to interpret terms like unreasonable? By an elected official who is FAR more suspect to greed, bribery, and the threat of losing his job every 4-6 years?? Cmon!
And terms like accepted moral standards are in use and defined - look on your newstand. Some magazines will have the black censorship wrapper, and others do not. The legal counsel for each publication is well-versed in the definitions of the statutes that apply to publishing and how those words are enforced.
When you get big cases, like the Supreme court, that is why you get justices voting one way or another, and why they explain their reasoning for the decision. I am far more impressed with judges at least explaining why they sit one way or another vs a politician who gets to weasel out of every explanation when asked the same question.
He's the "Decider"? That's not a good enough reason to do something - I want empirical proofs, established instances of success as evidence for a choice of action. And that is what the legal system does, even when you don't like the outcome.
His point is that those specific terms, including what is reasonable or not, what just compensation is, etc - these terms are found in other Common Law court cases at those times.
Here's an explanation of what is "unreasonable" from the British Common Law term Wednesbury unreasonableness "So outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it." That is one definition.
There was the famous question asked of Judge Potter Stewart as to what is considered obscene / pornographic, and a justice replied that "I know it when I see it." That was considered an evasive answer with no contextual support, and so subsequent judges usually need to consider other sources for a definition of pornography.
The reason why judge jobs are difficult - they are constantly asked to not only decide cases, but the meaning of terms raised by the plaintiff or defendant legal teams. And those definitions are used by judges down the line.
So, when you ask, how does Common Law define one term or another, you need to research Common Law to find the common thread if there is no clear existing definition on the books.
And to answer your question to Rohan, YES, Common Law clearly defines all those things and those definitions are agreed upon by other judges who use case law to help determine case outcomes.
No good man - same reason why biometric id cards will be bad. When the hacker changes his thumbprint to equal your info in the database, you are screwed bigtime to prove it was hacked. When the legal database is modified (like a Diebold voting machine or something) to make pot possession = treason, then I am royally screwed...
At least a judge and jury have the discussion in front of you and your defense team. The current courts are still a better arena than public opinion, the House / Senate floor, or the Presidential Secret Terror Kangaroo Court / Policy Development Memory Hole for deciding these deadly important matters.
If you have credit unions in the area, they are usually very good about no fees for basic checking. And they usually share ATMS with other small banks and so you only get atm fees at the big box banks.
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No, the band is fairly normal-sized. Not sure who you are thinking of...
I thought it was some new sort of delicious 3-headed chicken...
King Leonidas for the win!
What's worse with a central id system - you just get differently-flavored fraud. Instead of a counterfeiter working in his basement on fake ids and Social Security #'s, you get computer hackers in third world countries hacking into the central system to simply change the id details.
So, my retina pattern gets referenced to a terrorists, and vice versa - some undesirable can use his pattern to pretend to be me.
And how the hell can I fix my info once my eye pattern is hacked?! Same reason why SSN fraud is really rough - you can't get a new number once compromised and there is no way to block your # from having credit cards and such opened under it.
I predict about 18-20.95 a month now. I like XM; hope they keep their music selection. I would warn people from signing up for those long contracts and do month-to-month in case they merge and do something wacky like every other merger does to their customer base.
Remember, the judge refused criminal proceedings due to the insignificance and potential penalty. It doesn't rule out civil procedure, if Russian law works in a similar manner to our own system. Just like a judge would not allow an assault case to go forward if I flick you in the ear. But you could sue me later and collect damages. Civil != Criminal
That was also part of the reason why the DM has his little screen - so if you kept rolling natural 0's or something awful, they were able to keep the plot moving along.
But she did it to make a big point. Not b/c her feet were tired. And the Tea Party was the same reasoning - a bit of public theatre to draw attention to the issue and cause. Which is part of what makes this country great. If the P2P pirates went on a hunger strike or something on the front steps of the Mafiaa, then they would be making a similar statement. If I run IRC in the background and enjoy the smooth hits of the 80's in my house, then that is not quite the same distinction.
Going to the show is better for the venues and for the performers - they get a much larger cut rather than selling albums or tracks. If you love a band, don't worry about buying a disc so much. Go to their show, buy the tickets, buy the merch. That is where they profit.
Everything else the band does is their loss and exactly how their record companies make back the production budget, the performance budget, and the promotion budget.
Bands have to sell obscene amounts of albums to break even and make actual cash beyond weekend beer dues. They can achieve the same by aligning with other bands and setting up venue shows with much less effort and promotion, especially with the internet tools out there today.
And the live show is the true test of a musician - instead of the paid producer with his suite of effects and digital editing to smooth out the rough edges or bad playing.
Look, there is still no journalist shield law in place to protect Judith Miller's conversations. Reporters would really really like one. It is good for the freedom of information to allow for protection of sources for stories. And then you get to a line that has to be drawn. Who is a journalist? Could Josh be considered a journalist without MSM credentials?
Reporters want to be the 4th estate to the government, and all 3 other branches have zero interest in greater oversight. The courts don't want their proceedings televised. Congress doesn't want their business deals exposed to the light of day. The executive branch would classify the First Dog name and breed if they had the opportunity.
I don't mind the extra info or possible overload that added journalist protection brings. Until that day arrives, we see how journalists are trying to push the envelope and create a buzz that might translate into legislation. If they were smart, journalists would petition those monster media companies that own everything now and get some lobbyists up in that big round dome thingy.
Sounds like somebody should try a test drive before you slap down the cashish next time...
I agree here with your response. An even better question is : how can a game where all the servers are controlled by microsoft even allow a client-side install like a cheat or mod?! I understand that the draw details and other things are loaded on your own xbox, but I know that in my old Team Fortress Classic courtesy of Half-life - the mods had to be allowed or loaded by the servers.
Cheating was very easy to do, but ONLY on the servers that didn't care or specifically allowed map-wide mods (like funky gravity or add-on weapons). I just don't get how microsoft can't stop it.
I agree with most of the points you make, except for being penalized by quitting mid-match. I do it often enough. When my lag is horrible. when I see modders running around with non-map weapons or speed enhancements, or you pick up a weapon only to have them kill you. Or you find someone who manages to kill everyone instantly on spawn, racking up the points. (this happened to me twice!) There are many good reasons to not penalize for this. If you all play on even terms and act fairly, then the game moves along like it should.
I've not played it yet, but the description reminds me a lot of Deja Vu - there was a second one that was released on the PC, and I enjoyed both immensely.
I cannot say that I blame the civilians who reported the items - even though it's just a Litebrite, the message on it was a little too close to the whole 9-11 thing to be completely incongruous to terrorism. We are supposed to report things that don't look right.
That being said - Boston Police are to blame. They responded out of hand, and in good Boston fashion, found a great excuse to shut down the 3 roads we have in this foolish filled-in-swamp of a city.
The Seattle police did not have this problem. People reported the items, just like in Boston, and the cops picked them up, and that was it.
Really the bigger issue here - if some kook or cop digs in your trash or breaks into your house, you usually have some idea that your privacy was breached in some manner.
If some leet hacker or fbi digs into your traffic and looks at those awful websites you've visited while they were looking for the carding suspect, then you have a 99% chance of having not a clue that they were there.
I think this at least exposes the glaringly obvious problem that we have no idea who is looking at our info that gets logged on our ISP's. They could take more steps to show you who requested the info, but I doubt that they care about customer service here when they find it easier to avoid harassment from police and just give it up whenever they knock, warrant or not.
Exactly - FISA was designed not to harass or reduce the amount of wiretapping, but rather to act as more of a recordkeeper. Our intelligence services were very skilled at not following the rule of law and instead applying thier own justification for doing things as was convenient at the time.
If you or I do this at a job, you have people who oversee you and tell you how to stay in compliance. FISA allows you to get the warrant after the fact to give time-sensitive matters precedent over procedure.
Bush wanted to stay away from FISA because he was doing things that are illegal in his scope of info gathering. If he had actual evidence of wrongdoing, or a true suspicion that could have been substantiated by FISA (which is so broad as to be ridiculous compared to what real police go through for warrants), then he could get every single warrant he wanted.
I think FISA has rarely (if ever?) denied a single warrant.
They are the recordkeeper, and their job is to record who gets tapped, why you think they need to be tapped, and how you are going to wiretap them. The neo-con line was always that laws got in the way of necessary action. Oversight gets in the way of criminal behavior - that's why Walmart has cameras watching the store. The cameras do not impede my shopping in any way, unless I also am stealing or invading Target without a good reason.
That is crazy; why not simply block the page(s) with the bad info and sort out details w/ the page owner?? That to me would be more even-handed.
Most people talking about being a patriot do so because they are trying to attack someone/thing else; that's what Wilde was talking about. "I love America, why don't you move to Canada / learn to speak Arabic / go burn a flag you hippie / Cheney, Limbaugh, Malkin,, et al.
What you mean is more like wrapping yourself in the flag. Not very different, but nuanced enough to be different. Saying that we need to fight because honor or country demands it.
Both points of view are shortsighted and ignorant, but they are used for differing reasons; one for opposition attacks and the other for thin justifications.
But for sports fans, the tech is amazing. I am not a big sports fan, yet I remember seeing my first HD broadcast of a Sox game in a bar, and I could see the individual rocks on the field. The resolution is noticeably amazing.
However, I agree with you - unless the content is being recorded w/ HD cameras, like Discovery and the sports groups, it is a real waste. Yet, part of the point of sports broadcasts is to create the feeling that you are in a different section of the stadium or arena; HD really brings you a step closer to that experience, and is worth the added cost for programming that it brings.
That being said, I have a HD projector and 76 inch widescreen, and I still don't care enough to get the HD box for another 10 bucks a month for sports alone. If there were alternate fans getting into other HD things than sports, then they could rip the market open.
Don't you mean "Lowest Bidder?" Occam's Razor points to simple cheapness and incompetence vs any malign influence of pushing votes one way or another.
I see what you are asking - the person who controls meaning is the one with the power. This is true in any situation, legal or not. If Bush says that he defines who is a combatant and says you are a combatant, you are in jeopardy. Bush does not need any justification to do what he did - he doesn't have to cite any laws other than the ones in his head. Judges cannot and do not work that way as a rule! If the UN or Geneva Convention define who is a combatant and you don't meet that definition, you have some measure of protection due to the established definitions that have been around for fifty years.
This issue of definition is exactly what judges are supposed to be deciding - this is a big part of the job. They can be threatened and corrupted, and if you listen to the radio or pundits, it apparently must happen all the time, even while they sleep.
The definitions of language have to have a common ground that is agreed upon. Your lawyer goes through years of school to help understand exactly what those words mean. A good contract lawyer spends much of his/her time with a thesaurus to make sure a word with potential double-meaning doesn't create an adversarial situation. A good judge makes sure when he/she chooses his analogy or definition, that they are using the correct with that has a small potential to have extra, unintended meaning.
It is a futile endeavor within the total scope of language to try and assign one single meaning to every single word. It is the highest calling of the legal branch of government to try and do just that.
That is FAR harder than deciding a case that already has clear and appropriate precedent set from prior case law or common law. How else would you suggest we control who gets to interpret terms like unreasonable? By an elected official who is FAR more suspect to greed, bribery, and the threat of losing his job every 4-6 years?? Cmon!
And terms like accepted moral standards are in use and defined - look on your newstand. Some magazines will have the black censorship wrapper, and others do not. The legal counsel for each publication is well-versed in the definitions of the statutes that apply to publishing and how those words are enforced.
When you get big cases, like the Supreme court, that is why you get justices voting one way or another, and why they explain their reasoning for the decision. I am far more impressed with judges at least explaining why they sit one way or another vs a politician who gets to weasel out of every explanation when asked the same question.
He's the "Decider"? That's not a good enough reason to do something - I want empirical proofs, established instances of success as evidence for a choice of action. And that is what the legal system does, even when you don't like the outcome.
His point is that those specific terms, including what is reasonable or not, what just compensation is, etc - these terms are found in other Common Law court cases at those times.
Here's an explanation of what is "unreasonable" from the British Common Law term Wednesbury unreasonableness "So outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it." That is one definition.
There was the famous question asked of Judge Potter Stewart as to what is considered obscene / pornographic, and a justice replied that "I know it when I see it." That was considered an evasive answer with no contextual support, and so subsequent judges usually need to consider other sources for a definition of pornography.
The reason why judge jobs are difficult - they are constantly asked to not only decide cases, but the meaning of terms raised by the plaintiff or defendant legal teams. And those definitions are used by judges down the line.
So, when you ask, how does Common Law define one term or another, you need to research Common Law to find the common thread if there is no clear existing definition on the books.
And to answer your question to Rohan, YES, Common Law clearly defines all those things and those definitions are agreed upon by other judges who use case law to help determine case outcomes.
No good man - same reason why biometric id cards will be bad. When the hacker changes his thumbprint to equal your info in the database, you are screwed bigtime to prove it was hacked. When the legal database is modified (like a Diebold voting machine or something) to make pot possession = treason, then I am royally screwed...
At least a judge and jury have the discussion in front of you and your defense team. The current courts are still a better arena than public opinion, the House / Senate floor, or the Presidential Secret Terror Kangaroo Court / Policy Development Memory Hole for deciding these deadly important matters.
If you have credit unions in the area, they are usually very good about no fees for basic checking. And they usually share ATMS with other small banks and so you only get atm fees at the big box banks.